Saka
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The Saka were a group of nomadic Eastern Iranian peoples who lived in the Eurasian Steppe and the Tarim Basin from the 9th century BC to the 5th century AD. The Saka were closely related to the Scythi
Cataphract-style parade-armour of a Saka royal, also known as "The Golden Warrior", from the Issyk kurgan, a historical burial site near Almaty, Kazakhstan, c. 400–200 BC.
Scythian helmet, copper alloy, Afrasiyab, Samarkand, 6th–1st century BC.
For the Achaemenids, there were three types of Sakas: the Sakā tayai paradraya ("beyond the sea", presumably between the Greeks and the Thracians on the Western side of the Black Sea), the Sakā Tigraxaudā (the Massagetae, "with pointed caps"), the Sakā haumavargā ("Hauma drinkers", furthest East). Soldiers of the Achaemenid army, Xerxes I tomb detail, circa 480 BC.
Sakā Tigraxaudā tribute bearers to the Achaemenid Empire, Apadana, Staircase 12.
Scythians
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The Scythians or Scyths, also known as the Pontic Scythians, were an ancient Eastern Iranic equestrian nomadic people who migrated during the 9th to 8th centuries BC from Central Asia to the Pontic St
The maximum extent of the Scythian kingdom in West Asia and surrounding areas
The maximum extent of the Scythian kingdom in the Pontic steppe
The 5th-century BC Greek historian Herodotus of Halicarnassus is the most important literary source on the origins of the Scythians
Curled-up feline animal from Aržan-1, circa 800 BC.